Levine details attempts to get kickbacks

Stuart Levine was a man of big and crooked dreams, deep grudges and a twisted sense of integrity, his testimony during the corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko underscored Tuesday.

Levine's role as the prosecution's star witness is to narrate critical passages of the government's case against the fundraiser and confidant of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Yet as he took the stand for a sixth day Tuesday, Levine continued to give jurors far more revealing glimpses into his own character.

A day after relating a penchant for all-day drug binges with male friends, Levine followed up with intricate details on how he plotted -- often with Rezko's help, he alleged -- to squeeze a fortune in kickbacks out of positions he held on two state regulatory panels. And, again allegedly playing off Rezko's clout, Levine explained how he attempted to exact a kind of financial torture on a Chicago financier who had once crossed him.

Prosecutors played more wiretap recordings of Levine chatting with conspirators in his various schemes. One theme that stood out from the clandestine tapes appeared to give credence to the old adage "Honor among thieves."

On one tape, recorded in April 2004, Levine chatted with longtime business partner Robert Weinstein about schemes to rig decisions made by a state pension panel and a hospital regulatory board that Levine sat on. Levine said he pitched the schemes to Rezko, who allegedly responded enthusiastically after hearing how they could lead to nearly $8 million in illegal payoffs the pair could split.

Weinstein, whom Levine said was to be cut in on the kickbacks, at one point declared that Rezko sounded like a straight-shooter with whom there was no need to be "duplicitous." In another conversation, Weinstein said Levine and Rezko had developed a symbiotic relationship as they plotted to corrupt the boards.

"You are necessary to him because you're honorable in dealing with him and you're skillful in doing the task," Weinstein said.

And in yet another chat, the two partners detoured into a discussion of good business practices as they kicked around the notion of starting an asset management company they would secretly control to grab state business through Levine's insider position on the pension panel.

To succeed in their dream venture, Weinstein said, the two just had to be "honorable and predictable."

Levine spent most of Tuesday putting himself at the center of a parade of crooked deals he claimed Rezko was in on.

Levine's plans largely involved having asset management firms pay finder's fees to consultants he would select in exchange for Levine arranging business with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, the pension panel on which he served.

One $80 million deal involved JER Partners of Virginia. Levine worked the JER arrangement through Democratic fundraiser Joe Cari, who has pleaded guilty to one count of attempted extortion in the case.

In wiretapped calls recorded in the spring of 2004, Levine and Cari discussed when Levine would provide the name of a bogus "consultant" to be paid a finder's fee by JER. Prosecutors say Rezko eventually told Levine to put in place a roundabout mechanism to funnel the fee to the husband of a podiatrist to whom Rezko owed a large business debt.

Levine also detailed his efforts to manipulate a $220 million TRS allocation to Chicago-based Capri/Capital Advisers. He testified to initially trying to stall the Capri deal because one of the firm's principals, Tom Rosenberg, had allegedly failed to pay up on a $500,000 kickback he had promised Levine on an earlier investment deal with TRS.

In the spring of 2004, Levine said he brought up Capri and his troubles with Rosenberg in a talk with Rezko and Christopher Kelly, another top fundraiser for Blagojevich. He said both men expressed shock that Capri managed $1 billion in real estate assets for TRS even without the new deal it was seeking.

"Mr. Kelly's reaction was that this was a company that should be contributing a great deal of money to Gov. Blagojevich," Levine said.

Levine said he then floated a plan to pressure Rosenberg to play ball if he wanted to keep his lucrative TRS contracts. If he wanted the new TRS money, Levine said, he should be required to pay a kickback of $2.2 million or raise $1.5 million for Blagojevich's campaign -- his choice. Rezko and Kelly enthusiastically agreed, Levine claimed. If Rosenberg chose the bribe, it was to have been passed through former Chicago Ald. Edward Vrdolyak, someone Levine has testified he had worked with in the past to bribe city officials.

Testimony ended for the day before Levine finished explaining what happened in the Capri deal, and he is expected to pick up the story when he returns to the stand Wednesday. But prosecutors have said Rosenberg threatened to blow the lid on Levine's extortion effort, and the political players who had been circling him backed off.

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